What Does The Entei Say?

In my previous blog post detailing my first time at the London MCM Comic Con this year, I talked about the dedication that the fans who went to the convention had. One dedicated fan who I met whilst leaving the convention was a fursuit cosplayer dressed in an incredible furry costume as the Pokémon Entei.  

Cosplay is defined by Wikipedia as being short for "costume play", where convention attendees create their own costume and role-play as their favourite manga, anime, comic book, video game or film character. There are other forms of cosplaying such as furries and fursuits, in which a cosplayer creates an animal costume out of various materials that range from tails and ears to full costumes. Fursuits are mostly associated with the furry fandom, who are devoted to anthropomorphic animal characters which allow the wearer to adopt another personality whilst in costume. 

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Sophie, who prefers to go by Thunderon or ThoronWild, who created and cosplayed in the Entei costume this year at the convention. Sophie is 16 years old and has been unknowingly cosplaying since a young age “I only discovered what cosplay was when my friend Dawnkestrel from Furafinity and DeviantART explained it to me and encouraged me to make more suits, after seeing my fursuit for the character Amaterasu from the video game Okami I made for Halloween back in 2009”. 

The first fursuit she created was the character Red XII from “Final Fantasy VII”, which took her three weeks to make “My first convention was the London MCM Expo in May 2010 where I cosplayed in my Red XIII quadsuit. My most lasting memory is meeting other fursuiters for the first time in public and finding out that others actually did the same craft as me, which was fantastic and new!”

Sophie decides what costume to make next by being asked to cosplay in a group of other cosplayers that decide what character she should make/be, or by looking for characters that she likes and if they would be possible to make.

She chose to create and cosplay as the Pokémon Entei at this year’s London Comic Con because “me and two other friends wished to do a group cosplay for a masquerade performance. There were three of us, so we decided to do the three legendary dogs from Pokémon. I chose Entei because he was my favourite out of the three and I would also have fun making him as he has a long pelt.”

When I asked her why she liked cosplaying, she said that it’s the feeling she gets that “nobody knows I am ‘human’ underneath a four legged, illusion costume. It grants great confidence and magic as some people at conventions generally believe it’s a robot or an actual animal as it is so unusual. The feeling of hiding behind a mask is a huge confidence boost. I’m personally a nervous person, but I have no problem approaching anyone inside a costume because I don't feel I will be judged as a person, but as the character or the creature which is a wonderful freedom-like feeling.”

Her favourite experience from this year’s London Comic Con was meeting all of her online friends in person and in their different cosplays, doing what they all love and will be doing it all again next year. “I shall be attending London MCM Expo October 2014 with a huge Princess Mononoke puppetry group. I will be cosplaying as Ashitaka myself, but also crafting the large puppets such as making a huge, two person wolf costume for the character Moro and  the heads for other puppets and quads such as the Wolf pups and Yakul; not forgetting San herself.”

I personally cannot wait to see her next creation and cannot wait to see her costumes for her Princess Mononoke puppets!

You can find ThoronWild on Facebook via her Facebook page and on her Furafinity page. Go and check out her amazing costume designing skills by clicking the links below:

https://www.facebook.com/ThoronWildCreations?fref=ts
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/thoronwild/

I’m a nerd and this was my rant!